UPHEAVAL IN THE EAST: NEW LEADERS

UPHEAVAL IN THE EAST: NEW LEADERS; Poets, Students, Soldiers and a Few Communists Forming a Government

Special to The New York Times

Published: December 26, 1989

WASHINGTON, Dec. 25—
The Council of National Salvation, the group organizing a new government in Rumania, is a mix of poets, writers, actors, directors, military officers, student leaders and former Communist Party officials who share the bond of opposition to the Ceausescu regime, experts on the region said today.

Though the committee has neither defined its leadership nor formally designated top officials, it appears to have tried to choose representatives from all major branches of the opposition.

''It's clearly, very deliberately, a very eclectic and heterogeneous group,'' said Vladimir Tismaneanu, a resident scholar at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia. ''It represents many groups and the most important resistance forces.'' A Portrait of the Council

Late on Sunday, a list of 36 people said to make up the New Salvation Council Provisional Structure was released. Analysts and Rumanian emigres contacted today helped piece together a portrait of the council. The committee is in part made up of a handful of leaders known to the United States. Among them are these officials:

* Ion Iliescu, a publisher ousted from the Central Committee of the Rumanian Communist Party nearly 20 years ago and the principal spokesman of the new council; he may become the next head of state.

* Corneliu Manescu, Rumania's Foreign Minister in the 1960's. He spent much of the 1980's under house arrest and is recognized as the head of the provisional Government.

* The Rev. Laszlo Tokes, an ethnic Hungarian priest whose threatened deportation by the Ceausescu Government touched off a wave of protests in the city of Timisoara, leading to a brutal crackdown.

But more often than not, the majority of members of the committee are a mystery to those outside Rumania. Even though Rumania's opposition groups, repeatedly suppressed by President Nicolae Ceausescu's secret police, lack the organization of their counterparts in Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, they have pulled together. They are, analysts and emigres say, a ragtag collection of dissidents who will try to bring order to the chaos, but their selection is far from random. A Few Old Ceausescu Foes

''First, there is a category, a very small one, of political leaders who rejected Ceausescu a long time ago,'' said Pavel Campeanu, a Rumanian sociologist. Falling into that category are Silviu Brucan, a former Rumanian Ambassador to the United States, and Alexandu Birladeanu, a former member of the party's Politburo, as well as Mr. Iliescu and Mr. Manescu.

A number of professional military officers, angered by Mr. Ceausescu's efforts to strip the army of all but menial responsibilities, are also members of the new committee, Mr. Tismaneanu said. They include Gen. Stefan Gusa, a former Chief of Staff of the Rumanian Army, and Gen. Victor Stanculescu, a former officer of the military command in Bucharest.

Other new leaders are younger and more obscure than their fellow committee members. Several are students who were at the forefront of demonstrations in Bucharest, Timisoara, Cluj and Iasi, and they form a major wing of the committee. They include Ciontu Cristina, Eugenia Iorga and Marian Mierla, Mr. Tismaneanu said.

One of the largest groups in the committee is a set of outspoken poets and writers whose words continually drew the ire of Mr. Ceausescu. They are Anna Blandiana, a poet and author of short stories; Aurel Dragosh Munteanu, the former editor in chief of a literary magazine, and Dan Desliu, a well-known poet who several years ago dropped his support for Stalinism and began to oppose Mr. Ceausescu. Some Actors and Directors

A handful of actors and directors round out the committee's ranks, including Ion Caramitru, a well-known stage actor, and Sergiu Nicolaescu, a movie director who was among those who stood by Mr. Manescu when the takeover of the Government was announced at a television studio in Bucharest last week, Mr. Tismaneanu said.

The large number of committee members representing the arts prompted a Rumanian emigre living in Manhattan to conclude that the provisional Government would be altered substantially by spring.

''Why would an actor and a movie director be in charge of anything?'' he said. ''I don't know if they can turn around a country that is in such deep trouble.''

''This has to be a transitional government,'' he said. ''You cannot run a country with poets.''